andie, she/her, 26, united states. this blog is full of Tolkien. also other art, photos, fandoms, and big-eyes-emoji stuff, but mostly Tolkien. i tag! my girlfriend is bright ivanaskye, who is a lot, but not too much
@ tolkien: why didn’t tell me every horrifying detail of what happened when morgoth struck down finwe. there must have been a fight. i doubt finwe would have looked upon morgoth and done nothing as he moved to strike finwe down. where is finwe staring in horror at the thing in the dark that had taken those he loved in the time before they came to aman. where is finwe feeling rage and heartbreak and fighting morgoth with everything he has. where is finwe shining as bright or brighter than his sons.
“It is told that even as Varda ended her labours, and they were long, when first Menelmacar strode up the sky and the blue fire of Helluin flickered in the mists above the borders of the world…” (x)
Now the Quendi had possessed weapons in Middle-earth, but not of their own devising. They had been made by Aule and sent as gifts by the hand of Orome, when it became known to the Valar that the Quendi were beset by prowling evils that had discovered the places of their dwelling beside Cuiviénen; and more were sent later for the defense of the Eldar upon the Great March to the shores of the Sea.
Tolkien, J. R. R.
The History of Middle-Earth X: Morgoth’s Ring.
Ed. Christopher Tolkien. (London: HarperCollins, 2002.) 276-7 (The Later Quenta Silmarillion (II), Chapter 6 “Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor” §52a)
Okay, I actually really like this version because it explains several plot holes caused by the fact that ELVISH PREHISTORY IS COMPLETELY INSANE.
THE TIMELINE WE ARE WORKING WITH IS RIDICULOUS. LUDICROUS. LAUGHABLE.
10,061 Elves awaken
10,396 Orome discovers the elves
10,406 Orome returns to Valinor and holds council with the Valar, afterwards returns to Cuivienen
10,588 First Sundering of the Elves
This means that when they are discovered, the elves have only been awake for 335 years. Now this sounds like plenty of time to invent things right?
Not on a prehistoric scale, where new inventions take thousands of years – or hundreds of thousands of years. Our own species has taken 200,000 years to get where we are today, and most of our inventions occurred in the last 10,000 years. The bow and arrow took us about 129,000 years to invent; pottery took about 172,000. Agriculture doesn’t appear for 190,000 years.
Inventing things is hard. It’s even harder with a small, scattered population and no way to exchange information except in person. So innovations arise less frequently and take a long time to spread. The situation of the elves was really no different than that of early humans.
And the elves are operating under an extra handicap: they have no parents to teach them. The elves wake up under the stars and know nothing, like newborn children. They’re starting from scratch. Even our earliest ancestors had someone to tell them ‘no don’t eat that’, ‘you can drown in deep water’ and ‘here’s how you make babies’. Their first winter must have been a shocking near-death experience. And Melkor’s attacks add even more difficulty, because now the elves have to survive while also hiding and staying together.
Elves are superhuman, but there’s no way that the early elves of Cuivienen had progressed beyond simple stone technology, even if we assume 1 elf year = 100 human years of technological advancement.
So if Orome presented them with steel swords and spears made by the demigod of metalwork, they may very well have looked at their simple wood or knapped stone efforts and thought their own tools couldn’t even be counted as weapons.
Receiving technology and information directly from the Valar explains why the elves advanced so quickly, and also why contact with the ainur = more complex level of civilization.
This previous experience also explains why the Noldor were able to come up with the ability to make high quality swords so fast when they had no experience with war (swords are not necessary for hunting). They had an image of what they ought to look like, and a practical idea of how they were used.
Also, a note on hunting and hunter-gatherers. The image of man the hunter is very romanticized, but when we study mid-latitude hunter-gatherers, we find that the majority of calories they consume come from plants. Hunting is harder, more labor and time intensive, and far less successful than plant foraging. Humans invest so much effort in hunting partially for cultural and social reasons, and partially because meat is hard to get but a nutritional bonanza if you can.
Prehistoric hunters made up for their primitive weapons with their hunting strategies. Our most ancient ancestors used persistence hunting, where you literally run your prey to death. It may not even have required weapons; the prey collapses in exhaustion and only a finishing blow is necessary. Neanderthals and early humans used ambush hunting, and also took advantage of terrain to herd prey animals into places they could be easily killed, like deep mud or off cliffs. Fishing and small prey don’t require advanced weapons either – a sharpened stick, a club or a rock will do.
ephal ephalak idon hi-akallabeth 